Religion in Schools: Legal Update (Live blogging)
Uncategorized April 25th, 2008
On Thursday and Friday of this week, I was at the Education Law Conference held by the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute at VCU (my U.). It was a really well run conference. On Friday, I live blogged the session on Religion in Schools. It was my first attempt at live blogging. You can see the replay at the link below.
I have seen some issues regarding religion play out recently. I was talking to colleagues in another school who were dealing with a teacher who was asking her students “WWJD?” to correct behavior, and yes, this was in a public school. When challenged by administration after his had become known, they asked her about ’separation of church… and public instruction?’ and she volunteered that this issue, no moral religious education in schools, was precisely what was wrong in schools, today.
My ignorance of the law in this respect questions what might happen next - could this person be released? Or only if parents complain? Does there need to be policy involved for that district?
JB - I haven’t had the need to use a “Live Blog.” Where were you that you had this discussion/seminar?
Released? Don’t know about that. But, certainly reprimanded and told to stop. That’s a fairly clear case of a violation of the Establishment Clause. There’s no need for policy; it’s codified in the First Amendment.
So what is the rule on using the term “liveblogging?” How live does it have to be? When I “liveblogged” AERA I would frequently post the blog entry in the evening when I was done with the sessions for the day, but while AERA was still going, on my main blog page. You went with “live” as in before the session was even over! (which I guess actually fits the term, live) - So, is there a rule for this stuff?
How did the rest of the conference go?
Different people seem to do it differently. Some will just take notes real time and then post it to the blog. Others will do as you did. I used a program called Cover It Live (http://www.coveritlive.com) which is wonderful and free. The software can be integrated with any blog that supports iframes (which, of course, Wordpress.com does not do). The nice thing about doing it the way I did it is that Cover It Live actually functions like a chat room. Readers can watch me essentially taking notes and can actually comment or chat synchronously.
I don’t know that we need a rule, but I do tend to think that if you’re not allowing for comments synchronously, it’s not really live. But, that’s just my opinion.
Jon, I enjoyed reading this. I’m thinking of using Cover It Live for some upcoming workshops. What did you think of the tool?
It worked great for me (other than the fact that Wordpress.com doesn’t support iframes). I literally signed up for Cover It Live as the session was being set up, got started and linked it to my blog all within about 5 minutes. It’s got some interesting functionality, including the ability for readers/viewers to comment as you’re posting/blogging.